


Parental Supervision

by saltfromthesea



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow series - Gemma T. Leslie
Genre: M/M, One Shot, POV Simon, Parent-Child Relationship, SnowBaz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:13:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6349501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltfromthesea/pseuds/saltfromthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty years after the events of Carry On, Natasha Grimm-Pitch comes through the veil once more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parental Supervision

**Author's Note:**

> I end up writing a new little fic every time I reread this book, so. YOU DO THE MATH.

It’s been a long time—years, at least—since I’ve felt magic on my skin like this. I don’t count Baz’s. I’m so used to his, it’s like an extra pulse; I hardly feel it anymore. This feels more like my magic used to, back when I had it, when it would rise to the surface and flood through me, searing and all-consuming. I’d forgotten what that felt like.

It’s so intense that it wakes me up. Literally—it’s the middle of the night, after all, and I was more asleep than not, but this small microburst of magic makes me sit bolt upright, as awake as if I’d been electrified, gasping for air and clutching the blankets to my chest.

This time, I recognize her immediately. She’s glowing faintly in the dark, I’ve only ever seen her once before, and that was twenty years ago, but she’s a hard woman to forget. And she looks so much like him. Her coloring is different than his (even ghosts can’t compare to vampires, I guess), but those are his eyes, his cheekbones in her face. She recognizes me, too. I can tell, because her gaze immediately narrows, her face hardening.

The ghost of Natasha Grimm-Pitch doesn’t say anything, not at first, but I can see plain as day the thought that’s running through her head: _You’ve got to be fucking kidding me_.

When she does speak, I wish she hadn’t, because she starts yelling at me. It’s a soft sort of yell, more of a hiss than anything, but it’s enough to make me cower back. I wish I was wearing a shirt—the blanket I’m clutching suddenly doesn’t feel like enough.

“ _You!_ ” she’s snarling at me. “You! Again! Thirteen years, I waited, the first time, to see him, and I found you. And I trusted you, and then I waited twenty more to come back, and _here you are again_. What have you _done_ to _my son?_ ”

She’s striding across the room towards me, and Merlin’s beard I understand why everyone always comments on how Natasha Pitch was a force to be reckoned with, because even dead the woman is fucking terrifying. I scramble backwards on my hands, half-leaping and half-falling out of bed, taking most of the blankets with me.

“Wait,” I say, getting clumsily to my feet, holding out my hand as she advances on me. “Waitwaitwait." 

“Tell me what you did with him,” she says again. 

“Nothing!” I say, running a hand through my hair. I reach back and switch on the light, hoping that it’ll make her look less scary. It doesn’t.

“Then where is he?” she demands. In the split second that I looked away from her to turn on the light, she got right up close to my face. I’m sure she can hear my heart beating.

“He’s here!” I say, edging away from her and trying to look like I’m _not_ edging away from her. If she notices, she’s thoroughly unimpressed. “He’s here,” I tell her. “Let me—wait right there.”

She arches one eyebrow at me—shit, now she _really_ looks just like him—and I wince and slip out into the hallway, feeling suddenly frantic. There’s not a lot of time. I remember that about last time, about the veil. She won’t have a lot of time.

I squint down the dark hallway, wondering if I should call for him, but there he is, shuffling towards me, yawning. His hair is all over the place, and he’s pulling one sleeve of his shirt down over his hand (he’s always cold when he sleeps; I’m always hot). He’s an uncharacteristic mess, and I sort of love it. 

He looks up and sees me standing there, halfway out of our bedroom door, and he walks right into me, slouching forward to drop his forehead onto my collarbone. “Snow,” he says, yawning again—I feel his exhale on the skin of my throat, “Crowley, Snow, I’m so tired.”

I bring my hands up to cup his elbows and drop my head forward, my nose resting in his hair. He’s got a handful of silver hairs mixed in with the black now—not many, really, just a few, right at the top. He insists he doesn’t, says I’m making it up, but I spend more time looking at his head than he does, so you tell me. 

“I thought they were supposed to _stop_ keeping you up all night once they weren’t babies anymore,” he groans, pushing sleepily closer to me.

“I thought _you_ were supposed to be nocturnal,” I say, and he snaps playfully at me. “What happened?”

“Nat had a nightmare,” he says. “She’s okay now. Howie didn’t even wake up.” 

I could do this all night, honestly, but time’s going so quickly, and I need to tell him.

“Baz,” I say, shrugging the shoulder he’s leaning on, and he lifts his head. I must sound serious, because he looks instantly concerned.

“What is it?” he asks. “Simon, what’s wrong?” 

I bite the inside of my cheek, not sure how to break it to him. “It’s the veil,” I say. “It’s thinning. And, well…there’s someone here for you.”

His face is frozen in shock, but I know we’re out of time, so I take him by the hand and push the door open.

She’s still there, thank magic. Looking impatient but no less real. Beside me, Baz deflates; I feel all the air go out of him in a rush. “Mother,” he says, and suddenly it’s like we’re eighteen again and I’m listening to him talk about solving her murder, it’s like he’s five again, watching her die in front of him.

“Basilton,” she says, and the fearsome Natasha Grimm-Pitch has tears in her eyes.

I squeeze his hand once and then let go, backing towards the door, feeling quite suddenly like an intruder. I don’t want to leave him alone, not entirely, so I hover there, giving them space, and listening as he whispers, “Why are you here? It’s not that—well, we solved your murder. We figured it out. We gave you peace. I didn’t—I didn’t think you’d be back.”

“Baz,” she says, like she’s trying to make up for a lifetime of not saying his name. “Basil. I know what you are. And I know what you think.”

She reaches out to him, cupping his face in both hands, and he trembles, and closes his eyes. “I know you think it, and your father thinks it, and Fiona thinks it. And I couldn’t bear you thinking it anymore.”

His eyes snap open and he looks at her like he can’t believe he’s hearing it, like he can’t even hope it. They’re the same height, and she looks steadily back.

“My stance on vampires was strong,” she admits. “It was a hard line in the sand. And it was one thing for me to make that decision for myself. But Basil…I never in a thousand years would have made the same decision for you. If I had lived. It wouldn’t have mattered that you were a vampire. I never would have hurt you." 

“But Fiona said—” he starts, and she tilts his chin up. 

“Fiona,” she says, “was never a mother. She couldn’t have known. You’re my _son_ , Basil. I never would have hurt you.”

He exhales, hard, like he can’t really believe it. I can, though. Maybe I wouldn’t have before, but ever since Natalie came into our lives eight years ago, and Howie another three years after her, I think I’ve understood that no matter what he thought, there was no power on this earth that would have caused Natasha to harm him. Vampire or not. 

I want to tell her everything, then. About how, even believing what he believed, he’s spent the past eight years trying to be the kind of father she’d be proud of. That he’d stayed up with them nights when they were small (and now, too, when the occasional nightmare hits). That he has a kind of patience with them I didn’t know he was capable of (he’s certainly never had it with me). That he would hold them when they cried, walking tirelessly back and forth across the floor, saying, “ _It’s all right, little puff. It’s all right now,_ ” until they fell asleep.

Now, Baz swabs the back of his hand across his eyes, then turns and reaches out for me. I hesitate, and he rolls his eyes, jerking his head at me. I cross the few feet towards them, sliding my hand into his. 

Natasha raises her eyebrow again at this, and Baz tightens his fingers in mine. “Oh, get over it,” he tells her. “Simon and I were a done deal long ago. He’s the father of my children and all that.”

I am, technically. We went the surrogacy route, and since vampires can’t have children, I was our only option (We did ask Penny to be our surrogate, only partially out of politeness, but probably for the good of us all she’d said no. Actually, her response had been, “Fuck no, Simon. I love you, but there’s no way I’m going to spend nine months carrying around a baby I don’t even get to _keep_. But if I’m not the godmother, I’ll kill you both, yeah?”). 

So yeah, technically Natalie and Howie both share blood with me, but they’re ours in every way that counts. They both have Baz’s last name. Early on, we thought about hyphenating, but Snow-Grimm-Pitch seemed a little much—especially if they were going to be Normal. We really thought they would be, since I haven’t shown a single sign of magic since defeating the Humdrum. But it turned out that, even if my magic had burned out of me, I still have it in my blood, and magical blood breeds true; they both showed signs of it early on. Natalie’s two years away from starting Watford herself. 

Baz said he wouldn’t have cared either way—if they’d been mages or Normals—and I don’t think he _would_ have minded if they’d turned out not to have magic. But I think part of him is over the moon that they do. If anything, he’s been worried about _me_ , thinking I’d feel left out.

Surprisingly, though, I don’t. I’ve reminded him more than once already that my magic was so volatile that my spellwork was _always_ shoddy, so that’s not much different than it ever was. If anything, having Nat and Howie—and sending them off to school soon—makes me feel like I actually belong to this world again, in a way I haven’t felt in a while.

“Children?” Natasha’s asking now, and I snap out of my daze.

“Two,” Baz says, and she smiles, and it’s like watching a dragon grin. “Natalie’s eight, Howie’s five. Don’t worry, they’re both Pitches.” 

They have a nice little chuckle together at that, and then she looks over at me appraisingly. “Well,” she says. “I suppose this explains why I’m always running into you.”

I just shrug and grin because I don’t know what else to do.

She’s growing fainter around the edges, and I think we all notice it simultaneously. She looks at Baz and smiles again, and it’s a sad smile now, because I think we all know this is the last time she’ll be back.

She steps forward, pressing her lips to his forehead, then pulling back to look at him. “I love you, Basil,” she says seriously. “Never forget that.”

He nods and I see his throat working as he swallows, and I know he’s trying not to cry. His shoulders are back and his spine is ramrod straight, like he’s a little kid again, trying to impress her. 

I think that’s going to be the last of it, and I’m surprised when she turns to me, looking me steadily in the eyes. “Take care of him,” she says, a command. Then she kisses me on the temple. Turns to look at him one more time. And is gone.

For a moment, neither one of us says anything. Then he sits heavily on the bed, and I watch his chest rise and fall for a minute before I walk across the room to sit cross-legged on the mattress beside him.

“Are you okay?” I ask, knocking him with my shoulder, and he nods. He’s dry-eyed when he looks at me.

“I really am,” he says. “It’s bittersweet, you know. But it’s a weight off my shoulders as well. One I didn’t even realize was so heavy.”

I glance at him. “I love you, too, you know,” I say, because I do, and I want him to hear it one more time tonight, and from someone who will be able to say it to him again.

“Yeah,” he says, looking suddenly embarrassed, like, incredibly, after twenty years (twenty _years_!) of this, it still surprises him to hear it. “I do know. You don’t have to say it.”

“I think I do,” I tell him.

Another long silence stretches out before us. Through the window, I can see the sky starting to lighten, and I try not to do the math on how soon we have to get up. Then I grin.

“Your mom _kissed_ me,” I say, teasingly, and he looks at me like I’m an idiot, then smirks.

“Course she did,” he says. “You’re irresistible to Pitches, you know.” He leans into me, pressing his forehead into mine. “In fact,” he says, his voice dropping into a huskier timbre, “I’d be surprised if she was the only Pitch who kissed you tonight.” 

I laugh, bringing my hand up to cup the back of his neck as he brings his mouth up against mine and for a moment all there is in the world is the two of us, and I’m breathing him in and we’re moving together—and then I pull away. 

“Okay,” I say, “that sentence gets a little weird when we take into account the fact that we’re talking about your _mother_.” 

Baz winces. “I know,” he says. “That thought occurred to me like, the _second_ those words came out of my mouth. Forgive me, Snow, I’m exhausted. I’m not operating on all cylinders.” He groans quietly, a small noise in the back of his throat, and tips over, his head in my lap.

“So tired,” he says again, and I smile, my fingers going automatically to his hair.

“I know,” I say. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”


End file.
